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04 Mar 2015 10:36:11am

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I am sympathetic to Blond's views, but he ignores a major feature of twentieth century life--namely that local cultures, which are narrated and remembered over many years (including Christianity, by the way), have been swept away by a certain kind of mass culture. I mean televised mass culture--manufactured to suit the market, trading on novelty, and beset by historical amnesia.

This should be alarming enough for anyone formed in virtue ethics. But let's listen also to Robert Putnam of Bowling Alone fame, who says that (from a quantitative, sociological perspective) television was a major unraveller of participative society in the US last century, because it privatises leisure time. People just stopped going out, or went out less.

Frankly, something like this is closer to the hearts of most people than the encroaching welfare state.